Tenebrae frowned. ‘I see. “The Sword of Jiang” won’t deign to sully his hands with the first Praetorian sword, is that it?’ The grimace that crossed his face did not become him.
‘Gaius, I do not think you should pursue this further—’ Secundus said.
‘Indeed, Mister Tenebrae,’ I added. ‘They have warned you many times. This overweening pride doesn’t become you.’
He glanced at me. ‘I am Ruman. As are you both! It is an insult to my person and the personage of Tamberlaine himself, since I am his representative.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘You feel slighted and your feelings were hurt.’
‘Gaius,’ Secundus said. ‘He’s thirty years your senior if he’s a day.’
Tenebrae, whose expression had grown fiercer and more incalcitrant with each word spoken to him, shook his head. ‘I will just give him a tap to remember me by,’ he said.
Tenebrae stepped forward, swinging the gladius forward lightly to swat Sun Huáng on the hip – a desultory movement, like a parent spanking a wayward child – but as he moved forward the old man stretched and moved, blindingly fast, stepping to the side of Tenebrae so that Tenebrae was moving past him in a half-lunge and Huáng grasped the younger man’s sword hand, twisting it sharply. Tenebrae yelped in pain.
Sun Huáng took two steps back, holding the sword in his own hand. He came to rest again in a relaxed position, one that looked hardly martial at all.
‘The only sword a master needs is the one his opponents bring,’ Min said, echoing her words from the previous night.
Tenebrae looked surprised but undaunted. He flexed his hand – the one that Huáng had wrenched to take away his sword – and quickly scooped up the gladius he’d initially thrown to the old man.
As our dear friend Shoestring might say, it got real ugly, real quick after that.
Tenebrae wasted no time striking forward with his sword. Huáng neatly stepped out of the way, his foot lashed out, impacting with the younger man’s shin as he passed and sending him sprawling. Tenebrae drew himself up quickly, scrambling on the deck and cursing, but he clearly favoured his right leg as he came forward, his sword point low and weaving. In the past, as we’ve watched Tenebrae at his sword exercises and armatura, he’d always been quite flashy, twirling and spinning with his wooden blades, giving triumphant little yells with each practiced stroke. All of the theatrics were gone now. His brow was drawn, his face grim, and all pretence of showmanship vanished.
Tenebrae lashed forward, striking, but again Huáng stepped aside so quickly that his movement resembled a door being jerked open and took a long lunging step to his flank so that before Tenebrae could stop his forward motion, the old man was close in on his left side. With the pommel of his practice sword, he popped Tenebrae’s left cheek, sending the younger man toppling backwards. Blood erupted from Tenebrae’s nose and mouth. Secundus gave a startled yelp and went to his friend’s side. Tenebrae wiped his mouth and pushed himself into a standing position, bleary and weaving like an axe-struck bull of Mithras.
‘That’s enough, I think—’ Secundus said.
‘No,’ Tenebrae answered. ‘I’ll not yield until I have at least scored on him.’
‘Gaius—’
Tenebrae put a bloody hand on Secundus’ chest and pushed him away, leaving a crimson handprint on my brother’s white tunic.
I must give this to the young Praetorian; he could, if anything, take some punishment. But – and I can say this to you, my love – it was the Ruman pride and superiority pushing him on. A Ruman might be equal to every other Ruman, but no man from elsewhere is equal to a man of the Eternal City. Rume is the first among all nations and its citizens carry that with them, even to the Æthiopicum short and on to far Kithai. To their doom, even.
From somewhere, Tenebrae mustered the energy to move into a crouch and begin a more cautious stalking of Huáng. For Huáng’s part, he simply stood there at rest watching the young man, the wooden sword held almost negligently. It was a curious thing. His calm demeanour almost reflected Tenebrae’s aggressiveness back upon the younger man. The unassailable self-assurance that had suffused the Praetorian guard was gone now and all that was left was the gristle of pride and anger. How pleased Father would be.
Tenebrae made a feint at Huáng’s leg. Huáng, in response, made a short almost comical little leap to the side and forward so that he was positioned once more to Tenebrae’s side and back, behind the striking arm. The Praetorian took two hasty steps backwards, flailing with his sword, but Huáng did not press his advantage.
Moving in a low, aggressive crouch, Tenebrae circled. Blood flowed freely from his nose, making his face and jaw a gore-smeared slick and giving him an almost feral aspect. Sun Huáng did nothing except turn to face him. There was an ineffable settling of the older man’s frame, almost in resignation. When Tenebrae lunged this time, Huáng parried his strike with his sword then lashed forward with his own, so fast it was almost as if the movement didn’t have time to register on the eyes. His wooden sword struck the younger man directly in the sternum. Had it been a real blade, it would have exited his back and made a great swampy mess of all of his most vital innards. It was an obvious death blow.
Tenebrae pitched backwards, dropping his sword, clutching his chest. Secundus leapt to his assistance.
Sun Huáng placed the wooden gladius by Tenebrae and said, ‘You may present your sword to me formally when you have recovered.’
The old man gave Tenebrae a short nod of his head in what I could only surmise was a miniature bow, turned to Carnelia, Min, and me sitting at the breakfast table, and presented a full one. He then began his Eight Silken Movements again as Secundus helped Tenebrae rise and walk below decks.
‘What did he mean by presenting his sword?’ Carnelia asked.
‘It’s a Kithai formality,’ Min said. ‘And a great honour. Mister Tenebrae, if he chooses to present his sword, will be offered the chance to train with my grandfather.’
‘Would that mean that he’d be Huáng’s apprentice?’
‘No,’ Min said. ‘That’s a more ritualized process. It would mean that Tenebrae has the proper humility to accept defeat and by doing that is able to take instruction. My grandfather then would be obliged to offer Tenebrae clear examples as to how he defeated him.’
‘Examples?’
She said a near unpronounceable word. ‘… means martial wisdom. The only way my grandfather can make him understand how he was bested is to train him enough so that he might understand.’
‘It sounds like a very formal thing,’ I said.
‘In Kithai, everything has centuries, millennia, of history. Much as your Rume does. There are traditions that can be broken, but the matters of war and violence are not one of them.’
‘That makes a strange sort of sense. Is there a great deal of formality in the bedroom?’ Carnelia asked. Min answered with a furious blush.
The next morning, his face swollen into a turgid purple mask and walking very stiffly, Tenebrae found Sun Huáng on the deck in the sun doing his exercises. This time he carried a real sword.
Approaching the old man, he stopped five paces away and slowly sank to his knees. He lifted up his sword on both palms, skyward, and said in a clear voice, ‘Sun Huáng, I was wrong to doubt your skill. You bested me fairly and with great mercy, I see that now. I present to you my sword.’
I glanced at Carnelia, who sat nearby. ‘How does he know to do this?’
‘I told him to,’ Carnelia answered, winking. ‘The man is beautiful – well, not so much anymore – but he’s denser than stone. He needed someone to tell him what to do.’
‘That’s remarkably kind of you, Carnelia.’
She waved that away. ‘We’re on a boat, Sissy. Tenebrae has nowhere to go and he’d been trounced soundly. If he didn’t do a bit of growing up, it would make for a very tense trip.’
‘Possibly it isn’t just Tenebrae who has done some growing up,’ I said. ‘There was a time whe
n you might have enjoyed every moment of his discomfort.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, it’s nice seeing him have his own arse handed to him, I grant you that. But he’s a Ruman, and Secundus’ lover. And I would not have our brother’s heart broken by a wounded, prideful man.’
I looked at my sister closely. ‘Are you sure you’re well, ’Nelia? I have never heard you speak so.’
It was her turn to blush. ‘Oh, sissy. I’m quite sure I’m fine.’ She paused. ‘I think back on our time in the Hardscrabble, when all those dreadful vaettir were leaping about on the backs of the shoal auroch, killing and killing our men. Scalping Gnaeus. And I think about the baby you’re bearing. And now we’re going to a new unknown, sailing to Far Tchinee. And then I remember how silly I’ve acted and I’m somewhat ashamed.’
I took her hand in mine. ‘No need, dear. No need.’
She looked back to Tenebrae kneeling in front of Sun Huáng. The older man stood in front of him and was speaking in a low voice. Eventually he took the proffered sword and helped Tenenbrae to stand. They spoke for a short while and then clasped forearms in the Ruman fashion.
‘Looks as if Tenebrae is serving a new master, now,’ Carnelia whispered. ‘I wonder how much of this he will report to Tamberlaine.’ A curious expression crossed her face. ‘I wonder if Tamberlaine ordered him to seduce our brother?’
That was a horrible thought. And quite likely. ‘I hope not.’
‘I hope the honourable Sun Huáng beats him. Daily,’ Carnelia said.
‘There’s the Carnelia we know and love,’ I said.
‘There’s no changing a leopard’s spots.’
‘No,’ I said, looking closely at Tenebrae. ‘There isn’t.’
And that, my love, is all that I have to tell you. There is very little of the blood-ink left now and I am weary. The sea is still dark yet the sky lightens, a multihued riot of colour and striated clouds, and we’ve left sight of the shore. The seas have become rougher here, though nowhere near as treacherous as the Occidens, and I can see, through the thick glass porthole, the pink and purple of sky alternating with the blue-grey water. My back aches and young Fiscelion stirs within me. I hunger. I’ve sat here through the night, writing this all down to you. I feel as if you’re closer to me when I tell it – as if we lay in bed together and I was just speaking softly into your ear the events of the last few days.
Sometimes I take out the shirt you gave me and smell it. There’s something of you still in it. The ghost of you.
When the baby kicks or shifts, we are connected. When my eyes close and I can dream, I am with you. When I cut myself and let the blood, we are joined through the invisible tether.
I love and miss you.
Please write and tell me all.
Your loving wife,
Livia
EIGHTEEN
Kalends of Quintilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis
Next day, we came upon the slaughtered stretcher. Strange thing was, no carrion fowl circled above, no turkey buzzards tugged at the creature’s innards. The thing lay in a tamped down circle of dust. No shoal animals had disturbed it.
Fisk whistled. ‘All my days, Shoe, I’ve never seen the like.’
‘I have.’
‘Let me guess.’
The elf was laid, sprawled out, bound to stakes at the ankles and wrists with what looked to be hemp threaded with strands of wispy spun silver. Its eyes were blackened as if it had angelis fever, its mouth open in a wail arrested in the midst of finding voice.
On its visible skin, arms and legs, were burn-marks. I’d seen them before.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Winfried said, staring at the corpse. ‘That is a vaettir?’
I dismounted from Bess and approached the dead thing. With it laid out there, you didn’t get the scale of the creature until you were right upon it. From crown to toes, the stretcher was at least fifteen feet tall. A big male; powerful and deadly.
But trapped. Met its end in the ignominious dust.
I fear the things. Times I’ve cursed them. Have done my part in killing them. But never like this. Whatever its character – and I was beginning to see that not all vaettir were the same – no stretcher deserved death like this.
‘Been here two, three days maybe,’ Fisk said, looking around. He dismounted from the black and stared at the dead stretcher. The wind tossed the shoal grasses, making them writhe and whip in the morning light. Fisk made a circle around the creature.
‘Beleth made camp over here. Looks like he had a couple of fellas with him, judging by their boots.’
‘How does one trap a vaettir?’ Winfried asked.
‘One doesn’t,’ I said. ‘When stretchers are about, you hie your ass homeward or get out your Hellfire. Nothing else much to do.’
‘Clearly, there’s been some innovation along that front,’ Winfried said, grimacing.
‘Ia damn,’ Fisk said.
‘Last year,’ I said, ‘we took some patrician fools on an auroch hunt. Vaettir interrupted the party. Bunch of folks died but in the fracas, we managed to down one of the stretchers. She became Beleth’s pet, I guess you’d call it.’ I shivered with the memory.
‘And those markings?’
‘Beleth’s work, of course.’
‘What hellish thing could he be wanting from them?’ Winfried asked.
‘That’s the question,’ I said.
Kneeling by the creature, I peeled back the thin fabric covering its chest. Vaettir care very little for clothing and even less about modesty or protecting their incorruptible flesh from the elements but, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, they love to take trophies, mementos from kills. I think the creature’s shirt once might have been a homespun sodbuster’s blouse or part of a dress. Woven in its hair were bits of copper and turquoise. Wound about its wrist, a golden necklace of a style known a century or two ago.
There were more intricate burn marks upon its chest and limbs. Glyphs, Beleth had called them. For an instant I remembered Agrippina looking up at me with that unfathomable gaze. Baring sharpened teeth.
‘They look like the wards and burns that Sapientia showed us on the Grantham woman,’ I said. ‘And those that Beleth marked on Agrippina.’ I looked at Fisk.
Ignoring that, Winfried cocked her head and said, ‘Like great crows, they seem.’
I shook my head. ‘The vaettir are hard to understand, ma’am, and naturally, when you encounter them you want to liken them to something. You want to compare them to something in the natural world,’ I said. The woman looked at me. Her face was drawn and, very much like the vaettir, she had a rapacious look about her. ‘But they’re beyond nature as much as they’re beyond comprehension.’
When she said nothing, I continued. ‘They’re like crows, but they’re like the bear, or the mountain lion or even the shark, too. They’re fast as lightning in the anger-stoked skies. They’re like vicious tricksters. They’re like us, dreadful deadly creatures.’ I shook my head. ‘But they are more than this, too,’ I said, and told her of the stretcher that saved me at the ill-fated ambush.
Fisk spat as I spoke.
‘So,’ she said, slowly, ‘you mean to tell me that there are vaettir with other … other agendas than simply rapine and violence?’
‘Bah,’ Fisk said, turning away.
I ignored him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They are more than what we know. They are not just deadly, though they are that. Something else moves them.’
‘I did not understand the vaettir even before witnessing them and now I am even more confused,’ she said.’
‘Then waste no more time pondering it,’ Fisk said. He ranged about, stooped, looking at the ground, marking our quarry’s movements. ‘They’re headed for Port Caldo, Shoe. You were right.’
‘My three favourite words,’ I said.
‘Stow it, pard.’ Abruptly, Fisk stood up, alarmed. ‘The horses!’
A riffling sound came, like wind-whipping clothing, and a great shadow passed overhea
d, wheeling. A vaettir.
In a flash Fisk was at his black, tugging out his carbine and I had out my pistols.
‘Get down, Winfried!’ I said, only a moment before a stretcher arced overhead, flipping, wickedly clawed hands extended.
In response to my cry, Winfried immediately ducked and slid from Buquo’s back but not before the vaettir’s hands snatched her hat away. She cried out. Blood flowed freely from a deep cut on her forehead.
Another shadow whipped overhead, hissing, and both Fisk and I fired, leaving a cocoon of sulphuric Hellfire smoke around us. More shadows arced overhead – no telling how many stretchers were there – but Fisk and I had been in this position before. We remained low to the ground and shot anything that came close enough to sight. Vaettir, when they can’t get human or dvergar, are fine with killing horses, though.
Fisk’s black screamed and pitched, falling over into the dust of the shoal plains, blood pumping from its neck. Winfried, wild-eyed, snatched at Buquo’s reins, tugging his head down. Bess, without any prompting from me, grunted heavily and then knelt.
Cursing, Fisk readied his carbine. When the next shadow passed overhead, he busted loose two rounds, whipping the lever action around like lightning, tracking the vaettir in its course.
It was the stretcher’s turn to scream and whine. Off, beyond the circle of the grass in which Beleth’s stretcher was tied, the vaettir hit the earth, hard. Fisk ran forward, levering another Hellfire round into the breach of his carbine and sighting. He was on top of the stretcher and fired, once, twice. Beyond, I could see another of the devilish things racing for him.
‘Down, Fisk!’ I cried, and my partner dropped.
Guns out, I fired directly into the toothy, grinning face of the vaettir as it came forward, directly toward me. The sinking despair caused by Hellfire was matched by the knowledge that the stretcher, even though I’d placed some shots in it, was still oncoming.
Foreign Devils Page 22